There’s an interesting article about dying languages, but more than that, it’s also an interesting snippet into why different cultures use the words they do.
IF you want to tell someone where to go in the dying language of the Monchak, you d better have an intimate knowledge of the river currents in Mongolia, because that s how the verb go is expressed in Monchak: upstream or downstream a bit or a bunch, never mind that there s no stream in sight, or maybe there are a lot of streams going every which way. In Tofa, a dying Siberian language, that reptile you hope not to step on as you go is called a ground fish, not the slithering terror we know as a snake.
Which, in my mind, goes back to the theory / story/ old wives tale about how there are 133 (or some other ridiculously high number of) words for snow in an Inuit language. No, sorry, don’t know which one it’s supposed to be.
Different languages force their speakers to pay attention to different things, says K. David Harrison…
Makes sense to me. In my mind, it’s all about an attempt at bringing more clarity to the conversation. If you’re an Inuit, you’d probably want to be more specific in your description of snow. Snow that’s big, wet, and sloppy is completely different from snow that’s light, crisp, dry, and very flaky.
But more than that, it’s been my experience (not that I have that much of it) that different cultural groups need words to describe their different experiences.
Even in English, the Mennonites I know from southern Manitoba speak of zweibach (which I could be spelling wrong), a sort of double decker bun, the top knob being much smaller than the bottom part. I don’t know what function the top knob serves, but they were always a hit when we had them as a child, especially fresh out of the oven.
Faspa, another word from Plautdeutsch but used in English in the Mennonite communities I’m a part of, was used at every major holiday – Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and so on – where a very large meal was served at lunch, and then, instead of a regular supper, we would snack. Graze, even. But in the family, we don’t talk of snacks, we talk about faspa.
Of course, that’s borrowing words, but it’s all related, isn’t it?
Then there’s the Canadian habit of speaking of travelling distances in terms of time. "Oh, that’s about two hours away." I know of no other people who do this except Canadians. My theory? It’s because of the change from Imperial to metric. While Canada’s closely connected to the UK, we’re also neighbors to the US. We can’t decide who to emulate. Do we express ourselves using the metric as is used in the UK, Europe, and pretty much the rest of the world? Or do we express ourselves in Imperial as the Americans do? No, we do neither – we talk in time. Avoids that one nicely.
But then, we also can’t decide on whether to use color or colour, grey or gray. We’re firmly planted in being wishy washy. 
Point being that our language adapted to what was culturally relevant. (I think – I am, after all, no expert.)
As for us writers, how is all this relevant? After all, the article is about dead languages… Here’s the thing. If we’re aware that a group of people describe distances or travelling in terms of rivers because the area they live in is full of rivers, then that gives us insight into the culture and what’s important to that group of people. We can use insights like this to make our own writing richer, to bring our worlds more alive. We can use this to create better stories.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
And Germans are very interested in spitting on everyone…
You’re absolutely right, of course.
I’m absolutely fascinated by dying languages — Yiddish in particular. My grandfather still uses a few Yiddish words in his everyday speech, but he’s the only person I know who does so. Most American Jews know a few Yiddish curse words, but nothing else.
But it’s a wonderfully expressive language, especially when talking about food. I’m always slipping a few Yiddish words into stories I write (and then having to figure out how to define them without running into problems).
That’s interesting – I didn’t know that Yiddish was on the decline. It makes sense, of course – as the population grows and populations come in ever expanding contact with bigger populations, they’re forced to absorb the larger population’s language to survive.
Plautdeutsch is on the decline as well. My parents refused to teach it to us kids, and I begged for years. I still would rather have learned it when I was a kid when learning languages was still easier. Probably less than half of those of Mennonite descent in my generation speak it. Give it a few more generations, and it’ll be close to extinction, too.
This is very interesting to me now, as I’m from the US but living in Mexico. Yes, I realize Spanish is hardly a dying language, but work with me.
I’m still praticing my way towards fluency, but the difference between English and Spanish are already affecting my writing.
The sentence order is different, and I find myself mixing up my English, or using the wrong verb form, much the way the people here do when trying to speak English. I’m writing my book in English but catch myself making mistakes I’d never made before moving here. (I’m also switching to UK/Canadian spellings, but I won’t get into that here).
Since I’ve been here we have encountered people who still speak some of the older, indigenous languages. They speak Spanish as well, but it’s interesting to hear families talking in their ancient dialects.
As a side note, I’m from Michigan but also tell distances in time, so I think that trait hopped the lake!
I just love the intricacies of language. I love the little nuances and the obscure references. I love learning new words, and exploring the way definitions change over the decades. Words that began life with one meaning morph into the exact opposite 40 years later. I think that is fascinating.
Melanie, interesting comment.
Both my parents learned Plautdeutsch as their first language, High German as their second, my father learned French as his third, and English was my father’s fourth and my mother’s third language. They were both born and raised in Canada, by the way. 
Growing up, I learned English, but with Plautdeutsch syntax. See, my parents speak English, but in a way that sounds much more like they translated Plautdeutsch directly into English using Plautdeutsch phrasings and such. “Yet” is used in lots of sentences, for example, as an exclamation. “Lend” and “borrow” are interchangeable – there’s one verb meaning both in Plautdeutsch and High German. Things like that. So I have never known the difference between lend and borrow and use them both inappropriately, and yes, people do laugh at me.
It wasn’t until I took German in university that I began to understand why my parents spoke funny, and consequently, I spoke funny, too.
Yeah, I feel your pain.
Kathleen, I find that interesting, too. It also – for me – shows my age.
I remember when Valley Girl talk was big, back when I was a teenager, and reading a guide to Valley Girl Talk in a national teenage girl’s magazine – that was pretty funny, and for a while, some of in rural hick town Alberta spoke that way to mock the Valley Girls. But others adopted it to be, well, popular and “in”. One extreme example, in a way. Like, gag me with a spoon. 
Very interesting. I speak, with variable fluency, Spanish and Slovak and am so glad I do.
Spanish is a verbose poet’s language. It has some of the most beautiful poetic images. Becquer comes to mind.
English is always efficient and a minimalist. We aren’t interested in imagery, but function.
Slovaks don’t believe in vowels and have grouped consonants into unique dipthongs. I’m still learning how their conceptual vocabulary is built–so far they are pretty literal thinkers.
Anyway,preaching to the choir, language and culture are intertwined in amazing ways.
M